It seems yes is the answer to the question of whether Battlefield 3 will require the use of EA's new Origin service, even for users who purchase a physical copy of DICE's upcoming military shooter sequel. A question on Twitter directed at Global Battlefield Community Manager Daniel Matros asked "If we get the DVD version of BF3 do we still have to use Origin?" This was followed by another attempt, asking: "What about the rumors spreading on the forums that we need origin to play BF3 if we have the DVD?" These inspired the following reply: "Yes those 'rumors' are true :)." Thanks Teddy via BF3Blog.

The Alpha version of the web interface was a lot better than any previous game's ingame interfaces. The stats page and everything were laid out a lot better and were a lot more interactive. The Friends/Party interface was better, although better in this case means 'more Facebook-like' which is not necessarily a good thing, but it's not terrible either.

The really cool thing about the game literally just being the game and nothing else is that it makes the client extremely lightweight. I was able to tab and swap from fullscreen to windowed smoothly at any time during gameplay, including during loading screens, to interact with the web interface between rounds.